


The Feast

by devilsnowcandy



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Angst, Cannibalism, Disturbing Themes, Horror, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:37:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilsnowcandy/pseuds/devilsnowcandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jotuns eat the flesh of sentient beings.  When Odin adopted Loki, he did so with the hope that the hunger was cultural rather than biological.  He was wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Feast

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on norsekink.

The low murmur of guests, the clink of cutlery and glasses. Boasts and laughter.

Loki sits at his brother’s side, eating slowly, neatly. Beside him, Thor is eating like an oaf, gesturing wildly to his friends. Loki glances over, catches sight of Fandral’s wrist. It looks so much more succulent than the meat he is currently slicing.

He watches it, absently, as he places a forkful into his mouth and chews. The meat is always too well cooked, bland and tough. If he were to taste Fandral’s flesh… he allows himself to wonder, for just a moment, what that might be like. To close his teeth around the wrist, rip tender flesh from bone, nibble the palm of his hand.

“Ho there, sorcerer, for what reason does your gaze land on me?”

Startled, Loki looks up. Fandral is smiling at him, somewhere between flattered and uncomfortable. Loki swallows his mouthful.

“I only wondered where you commissioned your jacket.” He nods.

“I can give you the tailor’s name,” Fandral says, and there’s still a little of something, some suspicion in his eyes. 

“If you’d be so kind.”

“You two are far too concerned with clothing,” Thor comments, “The both of you, you make better women than Sif.”

“Now Thor,” Fandral complains. “The quality and style of one’s clothing says quite a lot about them…”

Loki smiles and turns his gaze back to his plate. He swallows, though there’s nothing in his throat. He knows what Fandral will think, and he can’t bring himself to be concerned. Not when the truth is so much worse.

-

He dreams it – the feast, small children and soft young maidens. Bare and lying on the table, waiting for the limbs to be ripped, their stomachs slit. Bloody and fresh. There’s never any sexual excitement, and for that at least he’s thankful, but the hunger – the all-encompassing hunger. He finds that he’s always hungry, more or less. He has been since he was a child, and it’s never gone away.

When he was young, during their tumbling fights he would bite Thor. Sometimes to the point that he drew blood. Thor complained and their parents would chastise him and Loki got better at faking contrition. Sometimes he noticed Odin looking at him with a strange, wary gleam in his eye. As he got older, he learned how to hide it better.

There is no one he can go to with this. Not his dear mother – how sweet would her flesh taste? – not his brother, certainly not his father. 

The whole court thinks he’s strange anyway. Perhaps it would not be such a surprise for it to come out? Loki the cowardly, lying sorcerer, who thirsts for the flesh of people he ought to love.

He holds the hunger to himself and wills it to leave. It never does.

-

“Our first battle!” says Thor, eager and smiling. “It will be glorious, brother.”

“Yes, glorious,” agrees Loki. He’s already excited at the thought of all the corpses to come. He’s sickened with himself. He would beg to be left behind, the better to withstand temptation, but he can’t – he can’t bear the mockery that would come with that.

The fight is brutal and quick, and Loki wonders if the sheer violence of it might dull his brother’s passion. In the same moment he dismisses the thought as ludicrous. Afterward, both alive and barely harmed, they are given a moment to themselves. Loki goes through the battlefield, looking upon the bodies - warriors, with tough muscles and gristle. Killed brutally, limbs hacked off, torsos torn and pierced.

He’s salivating. He honestly feels he can’t control himself when he kneels at last. He’s next to the body of an Asgardian, perhaps a warrior he knew in life. His lips part and he hesitates, he fights with himself. He shouldn’t do this.

But the hunger is too strong. He cannot hold it back. He bends to the corpse and sinks his teeth, always strangely sharp, into the side of its neck. And then it’s all blood and flesh, his magic forming knives to rip at the belly, pull apart the ribs, reach for the heart. The raw meat slides down his throat, luke-warm and juicy and he needs more, more.

He feeds – he doesn’t know how long. But at last he looks up again, remembers there is a world beyond this meal. He feels enormously satisfied, sated beyond belief.

From the hill, Odin is watching. Loki gulps down his last mouthful, falls back from his knees. His eyes have gone wide he knows, and he is not nearly fool enough to think he can trick the All-father into believing this is something other than what it is. His hands catch at whatever bloody organ or tissue is trailing from his mouth.

Odin, he thinks, is frowning. But he does not approach. He turns away and goes back up the hill, toward the rest of the soldiers.

Loki, unsure of what to feel, remains where he is until he remembers the spells to magic blood and stains from his clothes.

-

Now that father has seen him, he waits for – something. If not a punishment, then questions. Anything that will show his father has taken notice.

It never comes. 

In time, rumours flock around the court. Loki Odinsson is a coward, a wily wizard who prefers running or deflecting or tricking his enemies into submission to outright killing them. He carries no weapons with him but his magic, and he avoids the battlefield if he can.

His brother teases him about it. The Warriors Three think him a lesser man. The Lady Sif catches him watching her sometimes and rebukes him, angry and accusing. He longs to tear her face apart, rip the skin from her shoulders, but he smiles and jokes and lets them all scorn him.

He must prove to his father that he’s not some kind of freak. He must gain better self-control.

-

“He never wanted you to feel different.” 

_How could I not?_ Loki wants to ask. _Did neither of you think that maybe raising a child of a completely different species would have some consequences? Did you know nothing of your enemy when you took one of them in?_

He lowers his gaze to his father’s still form and imagines swallowing his beating heart.


End file.
